STURMWIND EX

Love it, great graphics and sound tracks and gameplay. Can't believe I missed this gem on the Dreamcast.

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Sturmwind is one of those games that desperately needs a neutral recommendation. At its core, Sturmwind is a great Shmup with a lot of "Euroshmup" charm while avoiding many of its trappings. However, Sturmwind has a LOT of fundamental design issues that keeps it from being an outright recommendation. Front and center of it all is visual clarity. While all its pre-rendered assets looks great, visual clarity is not. Certain backgrounds, especially overly bright ones, make enemy shots or even your own barely visible. This, paired with the fact that enemies can come from all sides means that getting shot out out of the blue without even seeing it happens more often than it should. It is also often difficult to discern what is background art and what is an obstacle. All in all, its great visuals also create a lot of visual noise. Another aspect i'm not entirely sold on is the power up system. On the surface, it's nothing out of the ordinary. Certain enemies drop point pick ups that, when shot at, cycle through shot power ups that add up to two options (drones) to their respective shot type. The issue comes from the speed they move across the screen. Cycling through them takes an unc…

Derivative Euro-shmup with good graphics and passable gameplay, but struggles to stand out otherwise. The C-64 style music is annoying and sound design overly noisy in general. It probably won't do much for you except pad your shmup collection, I guess.

This is more of a neutral than thumbs down, as I don't really like Sturmwind Ex, but I don't think it is a bad game. The gimmick with Sturmwind EX is the player has 3 different weapons. Each can be upgraded by juggling the power ups to appropriate color with that weapon is equipped. Which can be tricky as one of the weapons cycles through the options quickly and another cycles through them slowly. And the fast one is second and slow one is forth. Since there's also a points option as well. In addition, when the player's ship is hit, they lose access to that weapon until they grab a power of the same color. Once all the player weapons are destroyed, their ship is as well. In my initial hour of play I have yet to master this fairly straight forward mechanic. Because it you grab the power up with the wrong color it's wasted. Sometimes, it's tough to fend off the enemies, juggle the power up to the correct color and pick it up. What I don't really like about Sturmwind EX is many of the stages have transparency filters concealing what's going on. Fortunately, the game doesn't really hide the enemies' shots. However, it will camouflage the enemies themselves. There's a f…

Solid Re-release of Sturmwind that came out for the Dreamcast originally. Runs surprisingly well on the Steam Deck. The only thing i did, is run the game through Proton Experimental. Played in Arcade Mode until i reached the first Boss. No form of lag or slowdown noticeable. Can recommend if you are on the lookout for a horizontal scrolling Shoot em' Up.